252: How and Why to Get Better at Conflict - Getting to Zero with Jayson Gaddis
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When you can't be yourself in your relationship and you're not able to have the tough conversations that you might need to have, then you're pretty much ensuring the demise of your relationship over the long haul, along with your sense of who you are. In today's episode, we're going to focus on how to lean in to conflict in ways most likely to lead to deeper connection with others and with yourself.

But first, just a reminder that Relationship Alive is my offering to you to help you have the best possible relationships. If you're finding the show to be helpful, please consider a donation to ensure that we can continue. Every little bit counts. You can choose whatever feels right to you.

To make a donation, just visit neilsatin.com slash support or text the word support to the number 33444 and follow the instructions. And this week, I would like to thank Dave, Ruthanna, Nina, Jenny, Marie, Matthew, David, Drew, and

Anne, Valerie, John, Keerthi, Jules, and Rachel. Thank you all so much for your generous and, in most of those cases, ongoing support of Relationship Alive.

Now, just a reminder that I also have a free communication guide to help you achieve better connection when you are having difficult conversations, much like what we're going to be talking about today. In my free guide, there are three simple tips that you'll be able to use to help you feel connected and more at ease, no matter how challenging the conversation is that you need to have.

To download the free guide, just visit neilsatin.com slash relate, or you can text the word relate to the number 33444 and follow the instructions. And that guide is just a tiny piece of my overall Secrets of Relationship Communication course, which you can find out more about if you visit neilsatin.com slash course, C-O-U-R-S-E.

We also have the Relationship Alive community on Facebook where you can talk to other people who listen to the show and where we're trying to create a safe space for everyone to get support about their relationships. I think that's it. Let's get on with the show. Hello and welcome to another episode of Relationship Alive. This is your host, Neil Satin. When it comes to the relationships in our lives that matter the most...

I want you to sit there and think for a moment about whether or not you're willing to really get into it with those people. Are you willing to have conflict when you don't see eye to eye, when you have a disagreement, when you have a values conflict?

When you're not sure who should be doing the dishes and who should be balancing the checkbook, whatever it is, are you actually willing to go toe to toe as equals with the other people in your life? And if so, how well does it go? And if not, why do you avoid it?

These are important questions to be asking because the quality of our relationships is often not only determined by the quality of our connection with those people, but it's also determined by our ability to come back from challenging moments, the resilience of a relationship.

And so for today's episode, I wanted to focus on that very thing. How do you work through conflict and create resilience, not only in yourself, not only fostering it in the other important people in your life,

But how do you create a resilient relationship where you are able to be true to who you are and where the person or people that you're in relationship with are also free to be true to who they are and where somehow you manage to get through all of that better for it instead of in tatters because of your fights and inability to resolve them?

So in order to have today's conversation, I wanted to feature Jason Gaddis, who is the founder of The Relationship School, a colleague and friend of mine. He also does The Relationship School podcast, and he is the author of this gem of a book called Getting to Zero, How to Work Through Conflict in Your High-Stakes Relationships.

If you're a longtime listener, you know that I read a lot of books for this show, and this book is a game changer. It is like you will be doing yourself a huge favor by getting this book, reading through it, working through the exercises, and...

I don't often truly feel that way. Like sometimes when, when we're, uh, when we're talking about a book here on the show, I'll go through it and I feel like actually I can kind of mine what's important for you. This is one that I, I want you to get and go through. It's, it's that important. And, um, and when you do let me know what you think.

In the meantime, I just want to let you know that we are going to have a transcript for today's show. You can grab that by visiting neilsatin.com slash zero, Z-E-R-O, as in Jason's book, Getting to Zero. You can always text the word passion to the number 33444 and follow the instructions to also get the transcript.

And I think that's pretty much it. Let's dive in to chatting with Jason Gaddis about his new book, Getting to Zero, and how to work through conflict in your high stakes relationships. Jason, it's such a treat to have you back here on Relationship Alive. Thanks, Neil. So good to be chatting with you again and psyched to dive in. Great, great. So

Let's get started by talking about why we tend to avoid conflict. And I just want to say, when I was reading Getting to Zero...

This book was very triggering for me. Like, as I was reading it through, I was like, every page I was dealing with my own demons, you know, percolating up because the very first thing that you ask us as readers to do is to think about a conflict that we've had with someone who's important in our lives. And so it's helpful to do that, of course, to put all of our thoughts into it.

all the exercises and everything that you write into a context that will be really helpful. But it was really challenging. And I got in touch with how hard it is to actually face into the fire. So could we start by talking a little bit about kind of why people avoid conflict and why you might want to make a different choice? Yeah, for sure. So I'll talk about two main reasons, and I'm sure you have many, and I'd love to hear those.

But one is just in our biology and it's that we're the fact that we're social mammals and social mammals like to belong and we like to feel close to other people. And when we don't, it feels threatening and scary and shameful and painful. And so conflict puts us up against that pain where it's like, Ooh, if this doesn't go well, then,

I might get kicked out of the group. I might not be included anymore or invited. This person might break up with me. I might break up with them. And that's uncomfortable. And social mammals don't like to be alone. And we don't do well on our own for long, long, long periods of time. So that's kind of in our DNA. And then there's the more psychological story about why we avoid conflict. And that's

partly due to it hasn't gone that well in our history. And that circles back to our family of origin, the neighborhood we grew up in, the friends we had or didn't have, the church we grew up in, sports teams we were on, or dance recitals we played. And all the negative experiences socially and relationally often don't get dealt with very well. And then they compound over time. And then we enter into an adult relationship where

And we've got a lot of negative memory around conflict and negative associations. And so we tend to do what we've always done. And that's usually moving away from conflict, which is avoiding, or we might move toward it thinking that fighting harder and louder and getting bigger is the solution for some reason. So I think those are the two probably biggest reasons we avoid conflict. Yeah. And conflict is uncomfortable, right?

So you have to be in a space where you're willing to not only embrace that discomfort, but also, I think, face your own discomfort with being uncomfortable. Like, you have to look at why you...

would rather just check out and watch Netflix or pretend that something didn't happen or, or settle for whatever the situation is versus, Oh, it's, it's actually really challenging to me to feel these feelings and to not know if there's going to be a positive outcome on the other side. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I liked what you said there about just, um,

discomfort. I mean, it kind of boils down to that really is a lot of us don't like feeling uncomfortable feelings, both emotionally and on a sensory level in our body when we face off with another person or we have a trigger with a person, whether they're silent with us or aggressive with us.

It's just so uncomfortable. And I, people are like, oh, you must really like conflict. I'm like, no, I do not like conflict. Let's be clear. Um, just like the next person. Um, I just happen to have some tools and some ways through it that I've learned over the years. Um, but I, I still, to this day get very uncomfortable bringing it up. I get uncomfortable when I'm inside of it. Um, and it feels so, so good when I'm on the other side of it.

Yeah, so I definitely want to cover some tools for dealing with that discomfort in today's conversation. But before we do, I couldn't help but be struck by the irony of you're talking about how we're social animals and wired for connection. And so conflict brings with it the threat of disconnection. And yet...

So many people are stuck in relationships where they're unwilling to have the conflict that will actually bring them into connection with their partner. And instead they, they settle for this like half connection. Like it's not, it's not quite connection. Like why, why do you think that is that that's, that that's what people so often tend to prefer? Yeah.

Yeah. Well, let me kind of unpack one of my concepts in the book I call two shitty choices that you're speaking to really. It's that when we're faced with some possible conflict with another person, we have what often feels like only two choices. Choice A is we can speak up and it might go poorly and that's our fears. It's going to go poorly. They're going to leave and I'll be alone forever.

And it will feel really, really bad. That's choice A. Choice B, how people frame it is, I won't say anything. It's not that big of a deal. And they minimize it. And they justify why they're not going to bring it up. And then they betray themselves. And so they start to lose their relationship with themselves. So it's like,

That's how people seem to frame it for me is I can speak up and lose the relationship with you, or I can not speak up and keep my relationship with you, but lose my relationship with myself. And so if we frame it that way, it feels like two really shitty choices. And so I'm going to stay stuck in indecision, which eventually leads to choice B, which

And I'm advocating through this whole book that we choose choice C, courage through conflict, which is ultimately choice A with some courage. It's just saying, I'm going to have the courage to tell the truth here and get into it with this person knowing I might lose them, but I'd rather lose them than lose my relationship with myself. Yeah. Yeah. And let's be clear, I guess, like choice A is

The reason someone might, like they might just be afraid of conflict and they never tried to raise any issues with their partner, but they may be afraid of choice A because they have a history of conflict that goes nowhere. Yes. And...

So maybe you can talk a little bit like about that, like that kind of conflict that goes nowhere versus the kind of conflict that you're encouraging people to have through your book.

Yeah, it's an important question. When we have experiences, again, negative memories, I'd say, of conflict not going well because it doesn't go anywhere when I bring it up. I already tried that. I already said something years ago or I tried many times. That's defeating and it's understandable why someone would want to throw on the towel there and kind of change the channel.

Um, and if you're still with that person, that's just interesting to me. It's like, okay, if the conflict goes nowhere and you're in a relationship and you stay in a relationship, I think that's curious, right? It's like, Hmm, I'm choosing to be in a relationship with someone who won't come to the table where we together as a team can't seem to get to zero. We can't seem to get back to a good place.

Why is it that I stay? And then there's a number of, I think, theories and curiosities and tributaries we could go down there in terms of why do you stay? And a lot of times I think people just don't know any better. They don't know what's possible. This is kind of

the water they're swimming in and it feels normal. I mean, most of us growing up as kids, we probably had countless experiences. Maybe most, if we're listening to this podcast, most of our experiences didn't go great on the conflict repair cycle. And that's just the water we're swimming in. It's kind of like normal. And it can be hard to know there's another way and another possibility.

Yeah. Yeah. Talk for a moment about that idea of someone else coming to the table, because we in this universe of relationship wellness talk a lot about the power of a single person to affect change in a relationship.

And yet there, there's a balance there, right? Because if the other person really isn't willing to partner with you, then there's going to be some, there are going to be some limits on how far you'll, you will be able to go to resolve conflicts. Yeah. Yeah. How would you, how would you know? How would you be able to assess the person sitting at the table with you? Well, if we go back to your first question there,

Another thing I'd mention, and this is important to preface this whole thing, is my answer, is your how might have been not great. Your how might be not really working and not that effective. So we don't want to just point the finger at the other person saying that they won't come to the table or they're not receiving me or they won't work through this with me. We need to really examine closely if we're the growth-oriented person here. How was my delivery?

And have I learned the most effective ways to communicate to this particular person under stress? And each of us has a way we're going to receive your truth. And it's going to be different probably given our nervous systems and how we're wired. So I think that's just important to start with the acknowledgement that the speaker sometimes or the person advocating for the conflict sometimes is doing it in a way that is not that helpful to the other person. So that feels very important to say. And in the book, I talk about different ways we can communicate

um, broach the subject, advocate for our needs in a way that leaves us the best chance for success possible. And now if it still doesn't work, then we can open to the door to what, what's next. And I'm happy to maybe talk about that, but maybe I should stop there and see if you have any response there first. Yeah. Um,

So let's – sure, let's go down that road a little bit more because I think that was one of the questions that actually haunted me when I was reading your book and of course –

you address it more fully at the very end of the book, which is this whole question of like, what if someone actually won't work, won't resolve a conflict with you? Um, but it's that question of like, how do I know, like, how do I know if this is me? How do I know if this, this person's really workable? Um, you talk about, um,

like you mentioned all these different ways that we have, I'm trying to remember that they're the 10 something or others. Yeah. The 10 roadblocks. And, and some of those are quite surprising. I hope we have a chance to, to talk about them. For instance, apologies as a roadblock, super surprising. Um,

But the very last one you talk about is gaslighting. And it made me wonder, like, are there kind of warning signs that tell you, all right, the other person, they're really not going to be capable of having these kinds of heart to heart experiences.

high stakes conversations with me. And so I'm better served by just trying to resolve things within myself and figuring out ways to move forward without trying to get to the table with that person. Yeah, exactly. So I think we have to know who we're with. And when you partner with someone, let's just talk about an intimate relationship, although it certainly could be a

A family member, although that's a little trickier because they're family. You can't quite leave your family, although you, I guess, technically can. Or a business partnership. So let's just talk about an intimate partnership. You know, the single biggest determining factor of whether your partner is going to rock this with you and help you help each other get back to a good place is, are they willing to

Are they willing, number one? Willing to what? Willing to own their part? Willing to work on it? Willing to attempt to empathize? Willing to learn? Like, are they just in general, do the vibe you get, are they willing?

And if we're dating, we can look around at the person's life and see if they're a learner. When they are in pain, do they fall into the victim seat and blame everyone else in the world and struggle to take responsibility? Or do they have kind of a growth learner mindset where when they fall down and they get beat up by life, they apply themselves and they learn and they take responsibility for their learning. So I think we can just notice how people live their life.

And yet, even if someone's very good at learning about finances or learning about cars or learning about music and playing music, they might not want to learn about how to work through stuff relationally because they're still stuck in a fantasy of, if I find the right person, it should be easy and it should work out and there shouldn't be this much drama and pain and you're the problem. And if we're with someone like that, it's going to be very hard to move the needle with a person because...

In that moment and in that behavior, they're unwilling. They're demonstrating, actually, it's you, it's not me, and I'm not willing to really grow here. I'm not willing to change. I am who I am. You should just accept me for who I am. These are all red flags to me. Yeah. Yeah. And you talk about the importance of...

Taking ownership of your part as a way of getting yourself out of the victim role and turning that on its head so that you're the author of your life.

And what about that, the potential for being sort of trapped in your owning? Like, I'm sure you run into that, right, where people are so good at taking responsibility for their part that it's that they forget, like, well, the other person does actually still have a part here. And if they're not, if they're not going to show up and own their part, then, you know, this tango isn't gonna happen. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Some of us are over functioners, um, over, you know, we overwork in the relationship and we overtake responsibility. And I like to come back to my metaphor I use in the book of two boats. When we partner with someone in this vast ocean called life, we tie our boats together. I've got my unique individualistic boat over here. You've got yours. And we're basically partnering because we perceive that partnering is going to be better for us than just traveling alone, right?

long-term. So we partner, but we forget that this person is very difficult, especially after the honeymoon phase. And you're difficult. You're very difficult also. And gosh, now we're traveling out in the middle of the ocean and we kind of don't know how to work through it. We're kind of, we get stuck.

And one of our things we do is we blame each other. But if I've got, if I partner with someone who, as things get stressful in the ocean or the weather or on our boat with the conflict between us, and I, one of us goes dark and

and stays dark and doesn't want to figure out, huh, could we navigate that next storm differently? Could we try to, I don't know, prepare differently? And could we communicate better during that storm? If they don't want to do that, if you grew up as a maybe codependent type person with a sick family member or whatever, you're going to probably try to function for both of you in your boats. And you might be running around both boats trying to like paddle for the other side or

and fixing the sail if it's got a rip in it. And all of a sudden, because this is what you know, and it's familiar. And so you do that. Meanwhile, the other person is sort of just sitting there and not doing a whole lot, except complaining about you or wanting things to be easier. And you learned from a young age, probably that, yeah, to make things easier, I do my best to make this person feel comfortable and not get any worse, not getting any sicker, not getting more upset. And

And you continue to that habit of over-functioning. And that type of person, that type of relationship kind of works. An over-functioner, it kind of works with an under-functioner. They're both doing their part. But the way out, of course, is for someone, usually it's the over-functioner that's learning and growing, to take responsibility to say, this is actually feeling very unfair out here.

And I'm not going to keep taking responsibility. There's two people in this boat called our relationship. And each of us have a part to make this thing successful. And I no longer agree that it's all me. And it really requires that person to really dig in and do that work to get to that place. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, you have a great illustration in the book of the two boats tied together and one person doing all the paddling and the boats just kind of spinning around in circles. And, you know, I've been there and I've worked with a lot of people who have been there. That makes me think a bit like the willingness to take that stand and to say, hey, there's two of us here.

And we have to, I'm, I'm no longer willing to agree that it's just me who's going to do all the work here. Um, it requires us to be really in touch with ourselves. And when you talk about choice B, getting back to the two shitty choices, the choice to betray yourself, um,

That's heartbreaking, right? This idea that conflict is so hard that rather than be true to who I am, I'm going to start patching together a persona that hopefully is at least workable. And you talk about these concepts of like the true self versus the magnetic self. Yeah.

Would you mind diving into that a little bit? Yeah, totally. So when we're, you know, just to kind of go way back in time when we're born, we sort of come into this world and I like to think we're mostly our true self. Little babies aren't doing too much strategy to try to keep the big people around. But pretty quickly, young children...

and you know this being a parent and also being a child that we start to perceive in our environment what's scary and threatening and not going to be great for us and we start to develop strategies and that's normal and fine and all of us do that but what ends up happening to someone like me for example i learned that my true self my emotions my empathic nature my sensitivity wasn't that welcome in my environment it didn't seem like it anyway on the playground with boys

on the sports field and in my own family. So I tried to stuff that part of me, my true self, in exchange for connection. And what got me more connection and less pain and hurt and drama was the strategy of being a performer, being good at sports, being tough on the playground, stuffing my emotions and feelings and acting like everything was fine. And so I had this core inner conflict between who I really am and who I want you to think I am.

Because I don't want more rejection and pain. And again, very normal. Think of dating when you're single, you might put on a strategy or lead with more strategy and hide your true self because you don't want to be rejected, right? You're not going to tell someone on your first date that you have a ton of debt and you have a lot of anxiety and you're an insecure attachment style and you've been to therapy for 20 years and you can't figure life out. You know, you're not going to probably lead with that. Yeah.

Because you don't want to get rejected understandable, but that's your truth like the truth is is you're kind of a messy person like me and in relationships we we if we do that if when dating we lead with our strategic self and we hide our true self and this is where people get stuck and

In time, you're going to have conflict after the honeymoon stage and the drugs wear off of how amazing you guys are together. And it starts to get hard and you're way out in the ocean and things get very difficult. Your true self can't help but come out. And then the other person is going to act surprised. Like what? This is who you are? And this is where people get upset because they feel duped. And then they feel like they're with a difficult person and they don't even see that they're also difficult and they're becoming more difficult by the day because

And then people resist conflict. And I'm saying, man, conflict, guys, is the way back home to your true self. Because in order to go into conflict, you got to tell the truth. So it's this amazing opportunity for us to be more congruent and aligned with who we are is if we say yes to conflict. And in terms of saying yes to conflict, let's just define getting to zero. Because I don't think we really even talked about that yet. What is...

How is that different than how someone might traditionally approach conflict? Yeah, so zero is that place where we feel good and connected, and it's a number. And I use the number scale zero to 10 because it's easy. When I'm triggered, I move away from zero. I disconnect from myself and you, and I start to feel activated or triggered. And my number might be a three or it might be a five, or if I'm really upset, it might be a nine or a 10 even.

And that's when our sympathetic system takes over and we're really trying to protect ourselves. And this is just in our biology again. I call it the scared animal. Our scared animal sort of comes online and depending on the severity can kind of grab the steering wheel and take over. And this is when we say and do stupid things because we're coming from our hindbrain, not our front brain.

And, um, I just like to think zero is like, how can we get back to zero being our baseline being, we feel good together. We're safe again and we're connected and everything's okay. And conflict's just going to happen. You know, I talk about, as you saw that conflict repair cycle. So zero is not a fantastical place where we get there. Cause we read this book and we stay there. Um, the work is not about getting to a magical fairy land. The work is, um,

Can we learn how to get to zero over and over again because we will disconnect and get triggered over and over again in our life?

Right. I guess it could have been called Getting Back to Zero over and over again, but that's a pretty long title. Yeah. Nice. I like that. Yeah. And so when you are, so you're getting to zero and the idea, and you do talk about this in the book, is that I think when we typically think about having conflict, particularly in our nearest and dearest relationships, we're

We often imagine conflict that's happening from a place where we're at a seven or an eight or a nine in terms of our level of discomfort and trigger. And as we, as you talk about all the time, we've talked about on the show, it's, it's pretty much impossible to, to have a productive discussion or conflict when you are that disconnected from yourself. And,

But you don't necessarily have to be a zero to do that, right? Yeah, yeah, good point. I think talking for some of us is the thing that gets us to zero. It gets us from a seven to zero is talking. For other people, it's touch. For other people, it's space. It's important to understand what works for ourselves and the person we're with. And I think there's a number of different ways for each of us to get back to zero, back to a good place.

And the work is knowing ourselves deeply and knowing the other person and the levers to pull and the things that help their scared animal come back to a place out of threat, back into a place of safety. And, you know, as you've interviewed, Porges talks about the social engagement system. You know, it's like, how can we use our eye contact, our affect, our tone of voice, our facial expression, our

Our body posture, our body language, all as a way to gesture to the other person that I'm safe. It's okay. Like we're going to be okay here. And that's hard to do when you're at a seven and you're convinced this other person is like life-threatening and you want out. And yeah, in an abusive kind of relationship, that could be true. And I don't write about that in the book. That's not my jam there. I'm talking about non-abusive kind of everyday conflicts here.

Right. And that's an important distinction that if you're in an abusive relationship, you

you're not probably going to be able to engage in this process before doing some other serious work. Yeah, you need a different book. Yeah, exactly. Jason, we need to just take a quick break to chat about this week's sponsors. Now, after a long day of work, school or errands, there's nothing like unwinding with a great movie or series to cap off the night.

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This might be a good moment to talk a little bit about how we handle. So when I'm sitting in this sense of who I am and what my truth is and what my true self and the self that I want to bring to this relationship. And then I start thinking about conflict with this other person.

and things start to get kind of stirred up inside, where would you go from there in order to get to a place where I felt like, okay, I can actually, I can bridge the gap and try to do this again, try for choice C? - Yeah, nice. In the book I talk about self-regulation and self-reflection, and it's very important for all of us to be able to regulate our upset and to be there for ourselves in emotional times.

And sometimes we can't be, and we're under-resourced and no matter how hard we try, we can't. And that's when we hire a therapist or a coach or someone to help us come back into a regulation place of regulation. So I think in the, in the book, I'm just saying, Hey, here are a couple tips you can use to be with your own pain or experience or triggers or upset that activation, that number when it's, you're up at a three or five or seven, you know, can I rather than send that text from that place or that email, um,

Can I regulate, ride the waves of my emotional and sensory inner experience first, knowing that when I do that, I will actually come, my number will come down. We know that through, you know, I mean, meditators know this, that you go right into the pain or even physical pain, you can dissolve pain and you can dissolve discomfort and

Or you can at least take it down a notch just by being with it. It's very strange, right? Yeah, yeah. Can you talk for a sec about, I loved the Nestor meditation that you wrote about in your book as a tool for that. Yeah, so I created, I was a meditator for years in this Buddhist community. And it was the one thing I got out of that community was to how to be with my experience. And it was vital. And I wanted to create just a mini version of that that people could understand without being meditators.

just a basic mindfulness practice. So this acronym is Nester, N-E-S-T-E-R. And think of a nest, you become the nest and the experience or the discomfort is this little egg. And you're trying to be the nest, be like the nest and hold your experience with care. And so the N is a number, we just label a number like I'm a five. And then E is emotion. So we can just pick an emotion, what we think we're feeling and just take a close guess, a close enough guess, sad, bad, glad, afraid,

And then S is sensation. I feel some heat in my chest. I feel my low back aching. I feel a lump in my throat. These are all sensations. And then T is thoughts. What am I thinking about? And this allows us to step outside of our thoughts and watch them for a minute like any meditator does. They can, you can sort of watch the content of your mind chatter and

So you just label it. I'm thinking about blaming you, for example. And then R is resource. Where do I just feel okay in my body? After all, I've been here 40 something years on the planet. Clearly I have some resources or I wouldn't be here. So where are those resources right now in my body? And just that quick check-in can allow you to educate yourself and like, what the heck is going on here? And you could then communicate that to the person you're with. Hey, I'm a five and I'm kind of,

triggered and feeling sad. And it's about the fight from yesterday. But I feel okay, you know, in my back, I feel fine. And that can be sweet for two people to do and get in the habit of checking in like that. But the nester can also be an opportunity to stay with it for five minutes at a timer and just kind of stay with the sensation and ride it like a wave and see what happens. And invariably, if you're present with it, it'll usually subside.

If your mind latches onto it and you start cranking up, you can get actually more activated in this process. But we're going for the regulation of just being with it and not making up stories about it. And ideally that takes it down a notch and then we can send the email or we can have the call or whatever.

Yeah, just my own experience with that. And I'm imagining if you're listening and pondering some high stakes conflict in your life and feeling that sense of activation. Like for me, one of the things that can happen in the most activating situations is that my body will actually start shaking, start trembling, right?

And it's really disconcerting when that happens in those moments with those people.

But one thing that I noticed is that, you know, my desire to not feel that way, particularly in the presence of another person, that would be a reason why I would steer away from conflict, along with all the fear that it's just not going to go well, there's a history of things not going well, etc., etc. The meditation that you just offer, as quick as it is, feels like a great way to...

see your discomfort, to see what your body will do in a moment like that. And to, to learn to trust your, your body's responses and to, and to also maybe be a little bit more make, what's the phrase I want to use here? Like to make friends with those sensations. So for me, when I feel the trembling coming on,

I can say like, oh, like there's my trembling. Like I remember when I was sitting there thinking about this conflict and I felt like I was an eight and this was connected to feeling powerless and here were some of the thoughts I was having, et cetera. And just the act of doing that, I think helps make it feel more handleable.

Yeah. As far as moving forward and into the into the conflict. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. Yeah. And I offer some questions in the book about, you know, when I do when I get triggered by my wife and I'm not sure what's going on, I'll just sit down and I I kind of do a version of the nester and I stay with it. And then I ask myself, what am I scared of right now?

Because I just make the assumption I'm scared. My scared animal's online. I'm scared. That's kind of weird because part of me doesn't want to be scared, but I'm scared clearly because I'm like feeling defensive and kind of agitated. My porcupine quills are coming out. So it's like, huh, what am I actually scared of here? And that can take us down some interesting roads that can then

help us educate the person we're with. Like, honey, when I, this thing happens between us, just so you know, I get very scared. I start trembling. I

I go into some kind of fear response. And then if we want to take another step, we could take that trembling to them and show them what it's like for us. Because that vulnerability is very disarming for most people, as opposed to leading with my defensive, aggressive tone of voice and my posture. Yeah. Though it's a great example of...

How you want to be choosy in terms of who you're doing this dance with, because you can't bring that vulnerability to just anyone. That's right. And ideally, we're choosing people who want, who are committed to continuing to learn and discover who we are and allow each other in to our hearts. And as scary as it might be, because some of us have had experiences

intense histories and this is the beauty of partnership, but it's also the thing that makes it so complicated is, you know, we're, we're afraid that the person's going to hurt us. Like we got hurt before or some version of that. And then of course they start behaving in a way that's just like my mom or someone from my past. And it can feel so real sometimes the projection, right? And so it requires quite a bit of discernment. And this is why we want good friends in our life to run things by. We want a good therapist or coach, um,

in our corner. We want people that can hold us through that. Yeah, because it's, like you said, it's not, it might not always be actually safe. One last question before we move forward a little bit more. You offer a really great exercise that's pretty simple to do in the book that

is for uncovering your values and the values that you're actually operating from versus what you ideally want your values to be or what you say they are. And that feels like it's an important process. We don't have to go through it all here, but I just wanted to name that it can be confusing sitting there wondering, am I being true to myself and what my highest values are?

And, and so I think it's great to have a process to go through where you can get really clear on that for yourself so that you don't have to have doubt about moving forward and stepping into the fire. Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. I think it's, um, I mean, when I learned this from Dr. Demartini many years ago, his values kind of process that I adapted for the book, um, man, uh, it was so eyeopening because, um,

so many people fight over values and they don't know that they're fighting over their values. But also this whole notion of strategic self and true self is this way in which, well, wait, am I being who I think others want me to be or am I being myself? And this is why I love relationship as a path because relationships, it's very hard to hide in a long-term high stakes close relationship. You can, but it's hard.

And, and so I like to think my true self is hopefully my wife knows that part of me and my kids and it, it's not always pretty, you know, but I, I can start to learn about what I actually care about. And, and a powerful thing about that exercise is it's how you live your life. It's not what you claim, you know, and those might be aligned, but,

A lot of us claim we're really into our relationship, but when we actually do that exercise and we get honest with ourselves, it might be that it's actually like the fourth thing on the list and no wonder it's kind of struggling right now. Right. Right. Just a quick aside for you. I'm wondering when you look at the landscape of relationships that people are having, do you find yourself at this place where you're, where you recognize, Oh, the, the kinds of relationships that I'm advocating for are,

Like there, people can actually have longterm relationships where one or both of them does hide where they're, they are their strategic selves with each other. And, and,

They only get glimpses of each other's true selves, but we're taking a stand for a kind of relationship where, uh, where we're encouraged to, to, for, we're encouraging you to be true to who you are and to find relationships with people where that's possible. Yeah. Yeah. That's you. You nailed it. I mean, I, I don't know about you, Neil, but I, I want to be in a relationship where I can be me, like really me, my messy, beautiful me, you know? Um,

And I want to be accepted there. And I want, and I want to be in a, with someone who is that way also. And then I have to practice accepting them as they are when I want, you know, I want her to be, be more like me or be less agitating or whatever. It's a very powerful practice to, of love to, can I actually just keep loving this person as they are? Yeah. So I'm with you. We're advocating for,

these deeper authentic relationships where it's okay to be insecure. It's okay to be scared. It's okay to be messy. And we're hopefully having agreements and holding it in a bigger container of, of deep care and respect and practice that, you know, we're, we're in a, to me, success is like, we're learning together as a team. Right. Right. Let's be messy together and let's take care of each other at the same time. So we're not just traumatizing each other. Exactly. Yeah.

So let's say you find that internal alignment. How would you recommend kind of reopening the container of a conflict with another person? Yeah, you mean after there's maybe been some time and some space? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Or I'm imagining even like maybe a typical situation where...

It's been years of feeling like, oh, this is the way it's going to go. I've tried my best. I'm going to have to either, you know, I'm in the two shitty choices. But no, like, all right, I ascertained my values. I know what my priorities are. I know what I want. I'm not afraid to ask for it. How do I do that without just sending us back down the road that we've been down a million times? Yeah.

Yeah, well, I think at that point if a person's that you know clear and they've let's say read the book and done the Exercises and they're like, okay. I'm ready. It also means you're ready to lose the relationship There's a big difference there, right? I'm ready to like kind of come out half swinging and just kind of be half myself because I don't want it to go poorly Well, I'd say that's probably more choice B again. It's more of the same but

And I'm advocating for something even more courageous than that, where it's like, look, are you really ready to be yourself and get what you want? Because that's really what I'm advocating for here is you can be yourself and get the kind of relationship you want. Because you're never going to, I don't think, get the kind of relationship you want by not being yourself. Right. Because it's not going to be that fulfilling. Right.

right? So to be clear, that's what I'm advocating for. And I like to set contextual conversations. I talk a little bit about setting context in the book before you speak. And it's just saying, hey, I've been this way in the past. I've gone along to get along, or I've done this certain sort of behavior and I'm learning, I'm on the move and that no longer works for me. I'm no longer interested in that part of myself.

I'm transcending and including I'm, I'm loving that part of myself. And I'm also like, Hey, it's time to grow and partner or friend or whoever. I just want you to know that. And it might mean we part ways or it might mean we get closer. I'm not sure, but what I want in for us and I want for myself is I want a mutual respectful partnership where we are a team and it's all about learning how to collaborate and

learning how to be our messy selves together, respectfully caring about each other and sort of setting that desire. Like, and then asking quite frankly, are you, what do you think? Are you interested in that type of connection or not? Cause I'm no longer up for what was in what we used to be. And that whole vibe of how I used to be with you. Like I,

I'm going to be taking responsibility here. I'm going to be advocating for, I'm not running from conflict anymore. I'm going to tell the truth here. I'm committed to all these things and that might not work for you and that's okay. But I'd like to know, what do you think? You know, we can have that kind of conversation. Yeah. Yeah. So right in that moment, we're confronting the fear that by stepping into the fire, we could lose the relationship.

And it's for the best reasons. Let's say the other person hears you and is like, wow, you know, I never, it actually, it's really powerful to hear you talk like that. But I don't know, like, how are we going to talk? Like, we can't seem to resolve this conflict about,

this parenting issue with our children. I don't, you know, I don't know if we're going to be able to do that without tearing our relationship apart. And I'd say, yeah, I hear you and I'm willing to tear our relationship apart and burn it to the ground so that we can start something new. Cause I want to co-parent with you in a much, much better way that has my integrity intact. Cause I haven't done that in the past and I'm, I'm just a, I'm going to, I'm becoming a different person because,

And, um, I still want to respectfully co-parent with you. And if, if we have to go our separate ways, I'm willing to do that. Um, cause I'm no longer willing to betray myself, abandon myself, go along to get along, et cetera. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not up for that anymore.

And then as you dive in, there's like an order of operations that generally seems to work well, right? You talk about really listening to the other person so that they'll feel understood before making it about what you wanted to bring to the conversation. Yeah, I'm a big fan of, if I have a snag with you, Neil, I'm

If I'm resourced enough and able, my higher self or my best self always wants to listen first because that's how I'm going to get my needs met ultimately is if you feel understood by me. And I want that kind of commitment in myself. Just look, I'm stuck.

And how about I listen first? I really want to understand what it's like to be you, what I did in your perception that was so bad. And I want to listen until you feel like I'm understanding you. And I'm going to practice that. That's going to be my commitment. And it's not about getting it perfectly. It's about, you know, coming close, as close as we can to the other person. And, you know, when someone feels understood, they usually say, thank you. They usually say, you got it. Or, yeah, yeah, I feel understood now.

some version of that, right? And that feels very good to them. And they're usually, their number has gone down closer to zero if they're feeling really understood. And then they might have room to reciprocate. And depending on who we're with, they might not because that's not their thing and they don't want to do that. And they don't think they need to because it's all your fault. Well, again, that's really good information we can keep collecting on what kind of boatmate we've chosen and what kind of choice we want to keep making.

Right. And I like how you point out in the book that you're part of the context is things working for you. Part of the context is things working for the other people. And part of the context is things working for the unit, the us, the we in that moment. And I think that can be a really helpful thing to come back to, you know, as you're understanding the other person and, you

So many people seem tempted to want to abandon listening in order to get their point across or they see an opportunity to say the thing that they've been wanting to say. But if you can hold that seat of wanting

what we're working on here is, is strengthening the overall container. And that happens by me really like wringing out the sponge of, of you and your experience so that I really get you. Then I think that helps keep people from accidentally tipping the boat over when they're in the, in the listening process. Yeah. Yeah. And I think a lot of people, a lot of us habitually under stress, listen to wait for our turn, but,

We're listening with an agenda and we're talking about a different kind of listening here, just to be clear. Yeah. Though one of the things that I loved in your book, one of the many things, and just as an aside, we're almost out of time. There are so many things that I really wanted to talk about that we're, we're just scratching the surface. You guys, you got to get the book, getting to zero, how to work through conflict in your high stakes relationships, how

Um, it's coming out this first week of October, 2021. So when you hear this show, uh, you are going to be able to pre-order it and have it arrive on your doorstep. Uh, the second that it's officially released. Um, yeah. And if you're in the U S yes. Yes. Um, when you talk about listening, you also mentioned that it's okay. And under certain, certain circumstances to interrupt, um,

Oh, yeah. I'm a big fan of interrupting. Yeah. I thought if you're being a good listener, you're not supposed to interrupt, Jason. I know. Totally. That's what little good boys and girls do, right? Right. We don't interrupt. There's been a culture of kind of politeness about how we've been trained to listen, and it's just listen. And even with a monologue or someone who's just going on and on and on, your job is to not interrupt, and that's somehow a good listener. And I just think that's such bullshit. I know for me, I don't have...

I have some issues with presence. And when someone has a lecture or a TED talk to me about what I did wrong or something, I usually check out after about two minutes. I can't hang usually with what they're saying. And so I advocate for an interruption. And the interruption has one purpose, to have the other person feel understood and to have you be more present, really. So I guess that's two things. But it's like, so I, hey, Neil, hold on a sec. Wait, wait, wait. Neil, I just got to interrupt you real quick.

my bad. Sorry. I know it's kind of rude. And I really want to understand you. I don't want to make sure that you feel understood by me. So what you were just saying, wait, was it this or was it that? Did you mean this or that? And then you get a chance to clarify and then I can go, okay, got it. Continue. Sorry for interrupting you. Please, please continue. Because I want to get it as a listener. I do not want to sit there and check out. I can't hang with

someone talking to me for too long, especially if they're mad at me, I need to bite-sized chunks.

Right. There's only so much you can absorb in a moment like that anyway. And I like how it also subtly reminds the person that you're there, reminds them that like it's a way of also showing up with your own agency in that moment. Hey, just a reminder, I'm here and I really want to understand what you're, you know, you can reinforce the message of I want to understand where you're coming from.

But it reminds both you and the other person that you're an important part of the equation of the conversation. Yeah, and if the other person comes back and says, hey, don't interrupt me, I can say, all right, is it more important that I don't interrupt you or that you feel understood? Which do you choose?

Right. That's great. Right. Right. Cause you might own like I, cause I noticed I was starting to check out a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and I don't want to do that because what you have to say is important to me. That's why we're having this conversation. Right. Exactly. When it comes time. And, and I just want to mention some, there's some great sections in your book that we're not going to get to like the

the five most common fights that you have and how to address them and the 10 roadblocks to reconnection. And I had mentioned apologies as one of a surprising one of those, which maybe you want to touch on briefly, but I do want to want to at least spend a minute or two talking about when it comes time to finally be the one to share, right?

So I've done all my listening and now it's my turn to talk. You have some great guidance on how to do that in a way that's most likely to be helpful. Yeah, cool. And the apology real quick, I'll just say, I think apologies are overused generally and rushed.

And know your person. If an apology is the thing that gets them to zero and settles their nervous system, cool. I've just noticed what is more effective with people working with couples for years now and in my own marriage is acknowledgement of impact, ownership, validation, things like that tend to work better to settle a person's nervous system. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And then in the, in terms of the speaking part, yeah, I have, it's funny. I was writing that part. I was like 13 reminders before you even open your mouth. Right. And I'm like, is it, does it have to be this nuanced? I'm like, yeah, yeah. Actually speaking is so important and whatever people can take or leave, you know, all of them. But I felt like there were important reminders because so, so often we just start speaking and we don't think of the impact. And a couple, you know, are try not to merge together personhood and behavior, um,

For example, I love you and I get frustrated by your behavior of leaving your dirty socks on the floor. So you're communicating. It's not about, you're not attacking their personhood or their character. And then when you ask for a behavior change, you can ask for, you're not asking them to change who they are. You're asking them to change a behavior and it has to be reasonable. So those are some things we body body language is big.

I tend to say move closer if that's not threatening to your person rather than farther. A lot of people, especially people with anxious, insecure attachment styles, moving farther and leaving the room can be incredibly fear-inducing for them. So you want to be considerate again and know your person. Does moving farther or closer help this person? Again, eye contact. I'm a big fan of eye contact, something I learned through Stan Taken, who we've both hung out with and interviewed.

that actually when we don't look in someone's eyes, we go into memory and that can negative memory, especially. And so looking at the ceiling and staring, looking away from each other when we're fighting is, is actually can make it worse, even though it's, it's counterintuitive, but I encourage people to look in each other's eyes as much as they can. Those are some reminders. And before we even open our mouth and then as we're speaking,

There's a few things we can do, such as take responsibility for our part, get that there's impact on what we did. I see that that really hurt you and I see that impacted you and I'm kind of bummed about that, that I did that to you or towards you. Those are huge. And then we can, toward the end, we can talk about a reasonable request for behavior change. Like, hey, and it would be really cool if...

you would be willing to do X, Z, or Y for me or for us. That'd be amazing. And I get near you and it's okay if you don't, but I just want to ask for what I want here. So there's a few pointers. I'm not sure if there's any particular ones that stood out, but those are a couple. No, those are great. Those are great. And like I said, there's just so much here that...

I could tell that you put years of experience, all your heart and soul, and there's so much great practical information for you in this book. So kudos to you, Jason, for writing something that's very different than the typical book out there and super practical. Yeah.

And, uh, if you want more information, Jason, where's the best place that people can find out more about your work and the book? Yeah. Thanks, Neil. And thanks for so many just thorough questions. I always, I said that before we hit record, I think I love how you interview people and how thorough you are. Um, just how much care you bring to the conversation. Thank you. Appreciate that about you. Sure thing. Yeah. Um,

A couple places, so if you're pre-ordering, you can go to gettingtozerobook.com. And the advantage of going there versus Amazon is you can just pick up a couple of freebies, like the chapter one, you can come to my VIP book launch party, and you can get a little mini course on how to work through conflict. So those are a couple little perks. And then there's a conflict quiz we're coming out with too, that if you want to know your kind of conflict style,

you can go to, um, it'll be ready October 5th and that'll be, we'll just say that's on the page. Um, October 5th, same page and relationship school. Neil's been on the podcast, uh, before that's our podcast, um, relationships, the relationship school podcast. So yeah, lots of places out there to find us. Awesome. Well, keep, keep,

doing the good work jason and uh if you want to download the transcript for this episode again you can visit neilsatin.com slash zero as in getting to zero the book and or you can text the word passion to the number 33444 jason gaddis it's an honor and a privilege to call you a friend and a colleague and i'm wishing you the best for this book thanks neil thanks for all your support man absolutely

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